Banker suicides

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A Rash of Deaths and a Missing Reporter – With Ties to Wall Street Investigations
By Pam Martens: February 3, 2014

Senator Carl Levin’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations Is Probing Global Banks’ Involvement in the U.S. Commodities Markets

In a span of four days last week, two current executives and one recently retired top ranking executive of major financial firms were found dead. Both media and police have been quick to label the deaths as likely suicides. Missing from the reports is the salient fact that all three of the financial firms the executives worked for are under investigation for potentially serious financial fraud.

The deaths began on Sunday, January 26. London police reported that William Broeksmit, a top executive at Deutsche Bank who had retired in 2013, had been found hanged in his home in the South Kensington section of London. The day after Broeksmit was pronounced dead, Eric Ben-Artzi, a former risk analyst turned whistleblower at Deutsche Bank, was scheduled to speak at Auburn University in Alabama on his allegations that Deutsche had hid $12 billion in losses during the financial crisis with the knowledge of senior executives. Two other whistleblowers have brought similar charges against Deutsche Bank.

Deutsche Bank is also under investigation by global regulators for potentially rigging the foreign exchange markets – an action similar to the charges it settled in 2013 over its traders’ involvement in the rigging of the interest rate benchmark, Libor.

Just two days after Broeksmit’s death, on Tuesday, January 28, a 39-year old American, Gabriel Magee, a Vice President at JPMorgan in London, plunged to his death from the roof of the 33-story European headquarters of JPMorgan in Canary Wharf. According to Magee’s LinkedIn profile, he was involved in “Technical architecture oversight for planning, development, and operation of systems for fixed income securities and interest rate derivatives.”
...

http://www.jsmineset.com/2014/02/03/in-the-news-today-1780/

Icarus' wings are melting. He flew too close to the sun.
 
Isn't it the usual case that a suicide leaves a note or a trail (like on FB or twitter), and that is most often discovered quite quickly and spread all over the news? Even rampage shooters aren't an exception. Yet on this, it's all crickets. My BS detector is ringing loudly on this one.
 
Isn't it the usual case that a suicide leaves a note or a trail (like on FB or twitter), and that is most often discovered quite quickly and spread all over the news? Even rampage shooters aren't an exception. Yet on this, it's all crickets. My BS detector is ringing loudly on this one.

Ok I'll give it a go -

A lot of suicide notes are a shout to try and get someones or everyones attention as a result of a feeling of unfair or bad treatment from somewhere.

I would contend that high level bankers, if this is about some sort of financial crime, would be 'falling on their sword' rather than suffer the humility or worse of having to admit their sins.
It might even be that their family will be 'taken care of' in a positive way rather than a negative if they avoid the investigation. No pressure then ....

And being a bit brighter than the average rampage shooter or stopped benefits kinda person, bankers would likely not be leaving notes on twitter for the world to see.
 
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My take (cause I don't know!) would be that we will likely never know.

Genuine suicides, falling on the sword ("taking one for the team"), killing them? They all have holes in the story...

Yet three seems too many for coincidence.

***

Oh, and how do I feel? AMFs!

:flushed:
 
My estimation that these aren't real suicides - or could be real super-spur-of-the-moment things is based on some info I gained growing up. My mom was a psychologist specializing in suicides and attempts. It's the "This will hurt but fail" attempts that are cries for help, people. Like taking pills you'll barf up, or slicing your wrist the wrong way. They sometimes leave notes, but more often call someone just as they do the "attempt" that's supposed to fail. I know of only one of those that succeeded anyway (aspirin, it turns out will work and you won't barf it up quick enough to save you from bleeding to death internally - even a stomach pump and activated charcoal won't save it).

My mother (who had a fantastic sense of humor) even helped start the joke-journal "Thanato-therapy" in which the "just go ahead and do it" approach was touted as a response to "I'm going to kill myself" calls. Once people heard that it gave them so much pause - they quit that silly stuff.

No note, no suicide - that's about a 99% certainty, there are very few exceptions to that. Of course, in this case we are fortified with other knowledge about why someone who knows a bit too much might not be wanted around. Or might not want to be forced to implicate "friends" and lose their high place - making it suicide again, but in a sense, forced, because they knew what was going to be coming out about their and other's past behavior. But those types leave a note, apologizing to family and so on - every damn time.

These look to me like "suicides via double taps to the back of head" type actions. Only the Clintons were so brazen in the past. Hmmm.
 
Well, we're up to four dead bankers in around a month. To me, that is [to quote Sean Connery] "Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence but three times is enemy action".

In fact, these guys were all tied together tangentially by virtue of the class of banking they were involved in. It's too weird to write off in my book, and I'll lay odds that we haven't seen the last of this. Take not if you will, that each of these cats was pretty high up the food chain, each was in their very prime of their career and no one can adequately explain precisely why any of them would do themselves.

Then, take a look at the method of "suicide". One guy does himself with multiple nails from a nail gun and another manages to access a very secure portion of the building housing the rooftop mechanical system, opens a secure door for which he did not have a key and threw himself off of {i believe] highest building in the entire area.
 
Well, at least it's a start, like that joke about "what do you call 100 dead lawyers". Sick, I know, but not as sick as those guys. :doodoo:

I suspect they'll push this until someone starts looking a lot closer - bug linked an article that seemed to say it'd started already. But they might be "done" on this particular investigation of banker wrong-doing - there might not be anyone important (eg credible against even the best lawyer money can buy) left to roll on the really big guys anymore, and they know they can buy off/intimidate the small fry with a better risk/reward ratio.

BTW, when this place was built, one of the help got himself with a framing nailer, right through the forearm. He didn't even wince, since it missed the bone, which is what really hurts bad. He just got a couple bandaids off me and went back to nailing up the building frame. We all about crapped our pants over that one, but he seemed fine with it. And yes, with 3 guys nailing, it sounded like a gunfight - on plywood. On flesh, not so much.

If you've read John Plaster's "The Ultimate Sniper" he covers the effects of gunshot (nail is just a small caliber) wounds he's talked the recipient of, or been present for (SOCCOM in 'Nam)- and it's the foot and hand that are the very worst at disabling you instantly from pain. All those little bones.

Of course a CNS shot is instantly fatal, above the shoulder blades - the victim doesn't even feel that. It's *almost* believable someone could suicide with a nail gun. "Almost" being the key word there. I guess it's hard to hire a good hit-man these days, most of your takers are going to be FBI honey traps.

These guys aren't dumb, just very very amoral.$.02
 
Well, we're up to four dead bankers in around a month. To me, that is [to quote Sean Connery] "Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence but three times is enemy action".

In fact, these guys were all tied together tangentially by virtue of the class of banking they were involved in. It's too weird to write off in my book, and I'll lay odds that we haven't seen the last of this. Take not if you will, that each of these cats was pretty high up the food chain, each was in their very prime of their career and no one can adequately explain precisely why any of them would do themselves.

Then, take a look at the method of "suicide". One guy does himself with multiple nails from a nail gun and another manages to access a very secure portion of the building housing the rooftop mechanical system, opens a secure door for which he did not have a key and threw himself off of {i believe] highest building in the entire area.

the "jumper" is being re-investigated as suspicious, and Celente/Jones (yeah I know the source) claim its 20 now:
 
There have been 13 senior financial services executives deaths around the world this year, but the most notable thing about the sad suicide of the 14th, a 52-year-old banker at France's Bred-Banque-Populaire, is she is the first female. As Le Parisien reports, Lydia (no surname given) jumped from the bank's Paris headquarter's 14th floor shortly before 10am. FranceTV added that sources said "she questioned her superiors before jumping out the window," but the bank denies it noting that she had been in therapy for several years.

...

This is the 14th financial services exective death in recent months...

1 - William Broeksmit, 58-year-old former senior executive at Deutsche Bank AG, was found dead in his home after an apparent suicide in South Kensington in central London, on January 26th.

2 - Karl Slym, 51 year old Tata Motors managing director Karl Slym, was found dead on the fourth floor of the Shangri-La hotel in Bangkok on January 27th.

3 - Gabriel Magee, a 39-year-old JP Morgan employee, died after falling from the roof of the JP Morgan European headquarters in London on January 27th.

4 - Mike Dueker, 50-year-old chief economist of a US investment bank was found dead close to the Tacoma Narrows Bridge in Washington State.

5 - Richard Talley, the 57 year old founder of American Title Services in Centennial, Colorado, was found dead earlier this month after apparently shooting himself with a nail gun.

6 - Tim Dickenson, a U.K.-based communications director at Swiss Re AG, also died last month, however the circumstances surrounding his death are still unknown.

7 - Ryan Henry Crane, a 37 year old executive at JP Morgan died in an alleged suicide just a few weeks ago. No details have been released about his death aside from this small obituary announcement at the Stamford Daily Voice.

8 - Li Junjie, 33-year-old banker in Hong Kong jumped from the JP Morgan HQ in Hong Kong this week.

9 - James Stuart Jr, Former National Bank of Commerce CEO, found dead in Scottsdale, Ariz., the morning of Feb. 19. A family spokesman did not say whatcaused the death

10 - Edmund (Eddie) Reilly, 47, a trader at Midtown’s Vertical Group, commited suicide by jumping in front of LIRR train

11 - Kenneth Bellando, 28, a trader at Levy Capital, formerly investment banking analyst at JPMorgan, jumped to his death from his 6th floor East Side apartment.

12 - Jan Peter Schmittmann, 57, the former CEO of Dutch bank ABN Amro found dead at home near Amsterdam with wife and daughter.

13 - Li Jianhua, 49, the director of China's Banking Regulatory Commission died of a sudden heart attack

14 - Lydia _____, 52 - jumped to her suicide from the 14th floor of Bred-Banque Populaire in Paris

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-...r-death-paris-after-questioning-her-superiors
 
Something is definitely brewing here. I would like to see a long term actuary on banker "suicides" over about a fifty year time frame.
 
remember not so long ago when we were all speculating as to why so many bankers were 'retiring' ? We dont hear so much about it happening these days as the banks cheerfully explain how they have no choice but pay top dollar to attract competent staff ......

It could just be that theres so many of the fekkers that statistically theres always going to be these kind of events and its just a bit of media bias to feed our needs.
 
I'd be surprised if the penchant for "jumping" off tall buildings was statistically smooth over the years. I'm gonna guess it hasn't been this prevalent since 1929/Black Tuesday.
 
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